And just this morning, when he stopped at Cuppachino, hadn’t Grace Sinclair patted him on the back for keeping Violet on, telling him how the older woman had devoted her life to the firm and his grandfather, how she’d lived for her job and taken such pride in being Curtis Enright’s right hand?
Jesse sighed. There was no graceful way to get rid of Violet, and apparently no way to make her like him, or to convince her that he had the right to be there, or to accept him as Curtis’s successor. He understood that none of those things were likely to happen. Which, in itself, was okay; he could be mature and reasonable about the situation, even if Violet couldn’t. After Sophie’s call that morning, he was ready to put a big black X on the entire day.
But there’d been those few unexpected moments with Brooke that morning, he reminded himself, so the day hadn’t been a complete wash. There was something about that woman that made him smile, inside and out, and had since the first time he noticed her.
Well, she was hard to miss. To his eye, she was drop-dead gorgeous.
It had been months before that they’d been introduced by Steffie one night at Captain Walt’s. He’d gone there for dinner with Stef and her family, at her mother’s invitation, and on the way out, Brooke, her brother, Clay, and Wade MacGregor were seated at the bar. It had been obvious to Jesse that there was a strong undercurrent between Stef and Wade, and he hadn’t been at all surprised when the two of them left together, leaving Jesse at the bar in conversation with Brooke. That first conversation, which had started with her asking his advice about her will, had lasted for almost two hours, during which they’d covered everything from sailing (she did, he didn’t) to rock climbing (he did, she didn’t) and the best place in St. Dennis to hear live music (Captain Walt’s on Friday nights). Over the course of those few hours, it was apparent that she was more than just a pretty face. When she spoke, she looked directly into his eyes. When he spoke, she listened, as if what he was saying mattered to her. And she had a knockout laugh. Brooke wasn’t one of those women who covered their mouth when they laughed. Nothing was more irresistible than a beautiful woman with a good sense of humor, and he’d wanted to see more of her.
There had been many times since that first meeting when he’d thought about asking her out, but the word around town was that Brooke had yet to be willing to go on a second date with anyone, and that just didn’t fit into Jesse’s plans. She was the only woman he’d met since he’d been here that he really wanted to get to know—not to just take out occasionally, but to spend time with, see what there could be. Jesse had never been a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. Life with his father had taught him all he needed to know about playing the field, and he wanted none of it. Since coming to St. Dennis and making a place for himself there, more and more, he was starting to feel like it might be time to start to settle down.
Jesse knew from that first meeting that he wasn’t interested in being one of Brooke’s onetime dates, that he was going to have to wait it out until she was ready. The same instinct that told him that the time was right for him to come to St. Dennis had been telling him that Brooke was worth waiting for, and at first, he’d been okay with that. Now, however, might be the time to try to speed things up a bit.
Timing, he’d long since come to understand, in life and in love, was everything.
Chapter 5
“Be careful what you wish for. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Know your limitations,” Brooke muttered as she lined up several dozen cupcakes on the kitchen counter. “Then again, we could counter with ‘Opportunity seldom knocks twice. Opportunities are often disguised as hard work. Luck is the intersection of opportunity and preparation’—or however that one went.”
“Talking to ourselves, now, are we?” Clay leaned upon the doorjamb. “Is this what it’s come to?”
Brooke nodded. “I’ve been reduced to mumbling strings of platitudes.”
“Must be all that flour you’ve been inhaling this week.” He came into the room and surveyed the lines of cupcakes. “How many of these did you make, anyway?”
“Don’t ask me to add numbers together.” She shook her head. “The effort might break me.”
“Should I count them for you?”
“I don’t really want to know. I just want to know when I’m finished.” She measured butter into a bowl, followed it with confectioners’ sugar.
“These can’t all be for the engagement party.”
“These are for Lola’s.” Brooke pointed to the first two dozen on the counter. “And these are for Cuppachino.” She pointed to the pans she’d placed on cooling racks near the stove. “And those are for Scoop.”
“I thought you took cupcakes to Scoop on Wednesday,” he noted.
“They sold out.” She paused and smiled. “The same day. Actually, everyone sold out. Lola, Carlo …”
“Nice.” Clay nodded. “A very nice start to your business.”
“I’m not complaining. I swear I am not. But if I’d had any sense at all, I’d have waited until next week to solicit orders from the local businesses.” She picked up her zester and ran an unpeeled lemon over the top, then tapped the zester on the side of the bowl, sending the little scraps of peel into the butter-and-sugar mix.
“Because of the party.” Clay pulled up a chair at the kitchen table.
“Right. Because of the eight thousand cupcakes I have to make for the party.”
“I thought you said you agreed to make twelve dozen.”
“Right now it seems more like eight thousand. If this keeps up, I’m going to need to buy another oven.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
Brooke considered for a moment. “No, but thanks. I like to do things in order, you know? Frost all the lemons, then the strawberries, and so on for the frostings. Then I like to go back along the lines and decorate. All the twists of lemon peel, all the bits of coconut, all the little fondant flowers.”
“Yeah, my fondant flowers would never stand up to yours.”
“Go away.” Brooke laughed and picked up her hand mixer. “Anything else before I turn it on?”
“No, I’m good.” He snatched an unfrosted cupcake from the counter and headed for the back door.
“If you hadn’t grabbed one, I’d have thought there was something seriously wrong with you.” She turned on the mixer and drowned out his reply. “Which is why I always bake an extra dozen. I’ll leave them in the fridge. Logan can have one after lunch. You’re still on to bring him home from soccer in the morning?”
“I’ve cleared my schedule for the entire day. I’m at his beck and call, at least until Mom takes over when I leave for the party.”
“Great. Thanks, Clay. I appreciate it.”
“Hey, he’s my favorite kid. We’ll have a great day.”
She frosted and decorated a dozen of each of three flavors—lemon, raspberry, and chocolate—for each of her new local clients. After tucking them into the white pastry boxes she’d picked up that afternoon, she turned her attention to the cupcakes for the party. They were cool enough to frost, but she wanted to wait until tomorrow to add all the finishing touches, so she packed them into a series of large white boxes and left them on the counter.
“Crap,” she said aloud after a glance at the clock. It was almost two A.M. Logan had soccer in the morning and she had three delivery stops to make—one before seven. Any thought she’d had of studying tonight was dismissed.
“Tomorrow is another day,” she reminded herself.
She checked the back door to make sure it was locked, pausing for a moment to push aside the curtain to look up at the sky. Wisps of clouds, remnants of the day’s earlier rainstorm, hung low over the back fields, but the moon was visible over the barn, its pale light more dim than luminous. She left the light on over the back porch—her mother was convinced that that alone kept burglars from breaking in at night—and turned off the lights in the kitchen.
She was so tired that she skipped her usual nightl
y routine and fell face-first onto her bed, so tired that she would be asleep in minutes. Exhaustion directly into sleep was her new game plan to avoid lying awake and thinking about things she didn’t want to think about. Most nights it worked. She figured any morning she woke up and knew she hadn’t spent half the night asking questions that had no answers was going to be a good morning.
I can’t believe how late I am. Brooke parked in front of Vanessa’s house a full fifteen minutes later than the caterer had told her to be there. Way to make an impression.
Deanna Clark was the Eastern Shore’s most sought-after caterer, and she never—but never—contracted out any portion of an event. She hadn’t been pleased when she learned that the desserts for this party would be provided by someone other than herself. But since the party was for Dallas MacGregor’s brother and his fiancée, and Dallas personally had given Deanna the news, there’d been no discussion. At least, that was what Dallas told Brooke, who wondered just how gracious Deanna actually had been. All that really mattered to Brooke was that she’d make the most spectacular array of cupcakes she could, and hoped that Deanna was impressed—if not enough to ask her to work with her on occasion in the future, maybe enough to send a little business to her from time to time. It was a long shot, Brooke knew, but she was back to that opportunity mantra again: Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet.
She got out of the car and waved to Jesse, who was jogging on the opposite side of the street. She smoothed her skirt, then opened the hatch of the back of the SUV she’d borrowed from Clay. She slid the large white pastry boxes forward and hesitated, debating on whether or not to stack the smaller ones atop the pile.
Reminding herself that she was late, she piled on the small boxes and took a few steps back. There was no way she could get the hatch closed, but she’d have to come back out for the boxes of trays and cake stands and display racks. Leaving the back of the car open, she stepped up onto the curb, and tripped on the raised root of a nearby oak tree. She lurched forward, but was able to maintain her balance enough that she did not fall, but not enough to keep the three smaller boxes from slipping from the top of the pile and hitting the pavement. The other boxes shifted in her hands.
“Shit!” she yelled.
“Whoa, hold on there.” Jesse grabbed the bottom of the stack to stabilize it.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” was all Brooke could think to say.
“At least you didn’t drop them all.” Jesse steadied the rest of the boxes.
“I can’t believe this.” Brooke all but wept. “Damn it. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to carry them all at the same time.”
She blew out a long frustrated breath, then looked up at Jesse.
“Thank you,” she said. “If you hadn’t grabbed onto the box on the bottom when you did, I might have lost all of them. And then I’d really be screwed.”
“Cupcakes, right?” He gestured toward the boxes on the ground.
She nodded. “They’re probably mush now. Orange mush. Yum.” She couldn’t believe this was happening.
He leaned over and lifted the lid of a box at his feet. “These don’t look too bad. You might have lost one or two, but you can salvage most of them.” He closed the lid and looked into the next box. “These, too.” He looked up at Brooke. “When you get inside you can touch them up and no one will be the wiser.”
“She’ll know,” Brooke told him. “She’ll know and she’ll be feeling really really smug about the fact that I screwed up.”
“I thought you guys were all friends.”
“I meant Deanna. She’s the caterer. She has the reputation for only serving things she’s prepared herself when she does a job, but Dallas told her they wanted me to do the desserts, so she had to let me. I spoke with her on the phone a few days ago and she has a major attitude toward me, like she’s sure my cupcakes couldn’t possibly live up to her standards. I, of course, assured her that they would.” Brooke tried unsuccessfully to blow an errant strand of hair from her forehead. “Now I have a mess and I’m late on top of it.”
Jesse picked up one of the boxes from the sidewalk and opened it, held it so she could look inside.
“You don’t think you could salvage any of these?” he asked.
She peered into the box.
“Maybe a few,” she conceded, “but I don’t have time to go all the way back to the farm and then back here again.”
“What would you need to fix them?”
“A knife, for starters.” She looked into the box again. “Maybe some orange rind.”
He picked up the other boxes and stacked them neatly, then lifted them carefully. “You go on inside with those, I’ll take these with me. You tell the caterer you have more and you’ll be back in a minute with the rest. Then you run around the corner to my house—”
“You live around the corner?” she asked.
“I’m renting a house on Hudson. Three houses down from the corner here. You drop those off—”
“Please. Not the D-word.”
“Sorry. Take a deep breath, take the cupcakes inside, then come over and do whatever repair job you need to do, then bring them back. No one needs to know.”
“It could work,” she said thoughtfully. “I could at least fix up a few of them.” She nodded as if convincing herself. “There’s a bag in the back of the car with some fruit that I brought to use in the presentation. Maybe I could—”
“You can. Of course you can.” He walked backward for a few steps in the direction of the corner. “Four twenty-nine Hudson.”
“Thanks, Jesse. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“The front door will be open.” He turned and jogged off.
Ten minutes later, having been chastised for her tardiness by the caterer from hell, Brooke all but ran up the steps at 429 Hudson Street. The door, as promised, was open.
“Jesse?” she called.
He stepped into the narrow foyer through an arched doorway. “Come on back.”
“I cannot believe what a bitch that woman is.” Brooke stripped off her jacket on the way to the kitchen. “You’d think we were serving dessert first instead of last. And she was still arranging the canapés, so it’s not as if she’s ready either.”
“Got chewed out, did you?”
“A little.” Brooke looked around the kitchen of Jesse’s rented house. Wooden cabinets, walls, old Formica counters—all in the same shade of dull green. “Wow. Haven’t seen this much green since, I dunno, maybe never.”
“It’s depressing if you stare at it too long,” he agreed, and handed her a butter knife. She noticed then that he’d taken all the cupcakes out of their boxes and placed them on the table. “I thought it would save you time if you could see all the patients before you started to operate.”
“Thanks, Jesse.” Brooke took a quick inventory of the damages. “You’re right. I can do this. Maybe not every one of them. But a good many …”
She started with the cupcakes closest to her and began to remove their decorations. “I can’t use these pretty little flowers. They’re too messy.” She glanced up at Jesse. “Do you have a really sharp, small knife?”
“Maybe. The cutlery’s all in this drawer, if you want to take a look.” He opened the drawer and stood aside. “Anything I can do?”
“Thanks, but no. I’m going to have to figure this out as I go along.” She smoothed the smooshed frosting on all the cupcakes that had bits of orange rind on them before rinsing the knife, drying it, and starting over with the lemon.
“If you don’t need me, I’m going to run upstairs and grab a shower and get dressed. Just close the front door when you leave.”
“Jesse, I can’t thank you enough.”
He smiled. “I’ll see you at Vanessa’s.”
She looked up to see him leave the room on long tanned legs, then took a second look. The lawyer looked damned good in shorts. How had she not noticed?
The story around St. Dennis was that the previous occupant of the h
ouse Vanessa Keaton shared with her guy, Grady Shields, was still in residence—in spirit only, of course, Alice Ridgeway having passed from this life about two years ago. Brooke was one of the skeptics, however, so when the chatter at Steffie and Wade’s engagement party turned to a possible unseen guest, she excused herself from the conversation and took the opportunity to slip into the kitchen.
“I was just going to send someone to look for you.” Deanna, the caterer, glanced up from the counter when Brooke entered the room. “We’re going to start cleaning up from the dinner buffet. Start getting your desserts ready.”
“Good timing,” Brooke replied. Hoping to ingratiate herself with Deanna, she added an honest compliment. “By the way, everything was delicious. You guys earned an A-plus in my book.”
“Thanks.”
Deanna passed a stack of empty plates to one of her helpers.
Vanessa swept into the room in a tea-length rose chiffon dress. “How are we doing in here?”
“We’re doing fine. I’m just getting the desserts ready. The party is fabulous,” Brooke told her.
“The party is fabulous, thank you. Deanna, the food was everything you promised. Everyone’s raving about the Asian beef and the roasted vegetables.”
Deanna’s “thank you” was overlooked as Vanessa paused to watch Brooke stack cupcakes on one of several three-tiered displays she’d brought with her. “Oh, look. These match my dress.” She pointed to a trio of dark rose cupcakes that were still in the box.
“That one’s raspberry,” Brooke told her. “It has a little bit of ganache inside as a little surprise.”
“Oh, yum.” Vanessa picked one out and peeled the paper back. “Sorry. I can’t wait.” She took a bite. “So delicious. So … oh, man, that ganache just blends perfectly with the raspberry in the frosting. Wow, Brooke. Just … wow.”
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